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The Research News Roundup (RNR) is prepared monthly by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR). Articles contained in each edition of the RNR address research on women’s issues and topics of interest to women and their families. To receive the RNR by email, subscribe or update your subscription settings.

RESEARCH MAKING THE NEWS

Black Children are Nearly Four Times as Likely as White Children to Live in Poverty, Report Says

“Black children were nearly four times as likely as white or Asian children to be living in poverty in 2013, according a new Pew Research Center report analyzing Census Bureau data. The poverty rate fell among Hispanic, white and Asian children in 2013, yet even as this rate declined for them, it remained the same for black children. About four in 10 black children were living in poverty in 2013, compared to about three in 10 Hispanic children and one in 10 white or Asian children. Black and Hispanic children are acutely over-represented in terms of child poverty.”

Citing: Black Child Poverty Rate Holds Steady, Even as Other Groups See Declines, by Eileen Patten and Jens Manuel Krogstad, Pew Research Center

“Fighting back against long-held stereotypes about the inherent shame and grief that supposedly comes with obtaining an abortion, a study published in PLOS-One last week has found that 95 percent of women surveyed felt their abortion was the right choice to make, even when reflecting back on the decision over three years later… ‘Women in this study overwhelmingly felt that the decision was the right one for them: at all time points over three years, 95 percent of participants reported abortion was the right decision, with the typical participant having a greater than 99 percent chance of reporting the abortion decision was right for her,’ the authors concluded. ‘Women also experienced reduced emotional intensity over time: the feelings of relief and happiness experienced shortly after the abortion tended to subside, as did negative emotions. Notably, we found no differences in emotional trajectories or decision rightness between women having earlier versus later procedures.’”

“The report tells the story of how sexual abuse–which begins for many girls in the juvenile justice system between ages five to seven–directly leads to their imprisonment. Up to 80 percent of girls in the juvenile justice system have been sexually abused. Black girls who have been sexually abused and their Native American and Latina sisters–no matter how young–are not seen as victims. As the report explains, the justice system is plagued with a bias of race, class and gender that results in these young women and girls being seen as perpetrators. Too often the initial choice to punish and incarcerate an abused girl sets in motion a vicious cycle of abuse and imprisonment that continues throughout her life. In fact, a girl with a history of sexual abuse is five times more likely to be re-arrested once released.”

“Female job seekers are much less likely to be shown adverts on Google for highly paid jobs than men, researchers have found. The team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon built an automated testing rig called AdFisher that pretended to be a series of male and female job seekers. Their 17,370 fake profiles only visited jobseeker sites and were shown 600,000 adverts which the team tracked and analysed. The authors of the study wrote: ‘In particular, we found that males were shown ads encouraging the seeking of coaching services for high paying jobs more than females.’ One experiment showed that Google displayed adverts for a career coaching service for ‘$200k+’ executive jobs 1,852 times to the male group and only 318 times to the female group.”

“Over the past six years, Colorado has conducted one of the largest experiments with long-acting birth control. If teenagers and poor women were offered free intrauterine devices and implants that prevent pregnancy for years, state officials asked, would those women choose them? They did in a big way, and the results were startling. The birthrate among teenagers across the state plunged by 40 percent from 2009 to 2013, while their rate of abortions fell by 42 percent, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. There was a similar decline in births for another group particularly vulnerable to unplanned pregnancies: unmarried women under 25 who have not finished high school.”

With two-thirds of the world’s population predicted to live in urban areas by the year 2050, the global landscape is changing rapidly. Urbanization brings with it numerous benefits, but the growing inequality between and within cities has complicated implications for urban residents, especially for those that have been historically marginalized. For women in particular, accessing the increased social, economic, and political opportunities ostensibly available to them in cities can be, in reality, incredibly difficult to take advantage of.

“Decades of infrequent and inadequate adjustment to the federal minimum wage have left today’s low-wage workers earning significantly less than their counterparts 50 years ago. Raising the federal minimum wage to $12 per hour by 2020 would lift wages for one-quarter of American workers and help restore the minimum wage’s role as a labor standard that ensures work is a means to escape poverty, according to EPI economic analyst David Cooper. In Raising the Minimum Wage to $12 by 2020 Would Lift Wages for 35 Million American Workers, Cooper analyzes the impact of the Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) and Representative Robert ‘Bobby’ Scott’s (D-VA) Raise the Wage Act of 2015, which proposes raising the minimum wage to $12 by 2020 and gradually eliminating the subminimum wage for tipped workers.”

To understand how children of immigrants are faring in the United States, it is important to examine contextual factors. In this paper, we analyze family influences; specifically, differences in parenting among immigrant mothers with different national origins, focusing on mothers from Mexico, other Latin American countries, China, and other Asian countries. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort, we look at the economic, work, social support, and health contexts in which immigrant families are situated, and at differences in parenting practices. We then explore whether differences in contexts mediate the parenting differences our analyses reveal.

“The 200 members of the Experts of Color Network released ‘A Policy Agenda for Closing the Racial Wealth Gap’ today. Black and Latino families hold 6 and 7 cents respectively for every dollar of wealth held by white families. These wide-ranging policies aim to remove structural barriers preventing families of color from attaining economic stability for themselves and future generations. The policies are grouped in seven categories: employment, financial services, entrepreneurship, housing, education, tax policy, and retirement. The document also highlights the importance of targeting policies to address the needs of those most disadvantaged and, in the process, provide positive race-specific results.”

“To remain competitive in the 21st-century global economy, the United States must recognize the value of child care as an investment in early childhood education and as a support system for working families. Child Care in America: 2015 State Fact Sheets provides important data to better understand America’s working families and the circumstances they face. As such, it is a critical tool for child care advocates, policymakers and program administrators to guide decision-making about child care programs and costs.”